While Republican enablers and, of course, Trump himself are attempting to downplay how poorly they have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s worth remembering that South Korea, which had their first known case the same day as we did, has done a much better job containing the damage. As I noted, South Korea is the benchmark for how the U.S. should be doing. So this will be the start of a somewhat regular comparison between the U.S. and South Korea, with South Korean data adjusted for population size.
As of 6 pm, April 12 (data from here):
| S. Korea deaths | Adjusted for popl. S. Korea deaths | U.S. deaths | S. Korea cases | Adjusted S. Korea cases | U.S. cases | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 208 | 1,352 | 16,686 | 10,450 | 67,925 | 466,299 | 10-APR-2020:1 |
| 214 | 1,391 | 22,020 | 10,512 | 68,328 | 555,313 | 12-APR-2020:3 |
There is no need to adjust for population until the we approach saturation levels (>10% of the population ). Until then it is just exponential growth and we should compare numbers straight.